


Here In The Darkness I Feel My Heart Race

by ellaeverlasting



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Curses, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Halloween, Magic, Museums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 21:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12308049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellaeverlasting/pseuds/ellaeverlasting
Summary: Marinette: museum curator, superhero of Paris, cursed. Her partner, Chat Noir, is the only one who will believe her. And, after all, it is Chat’s job to help the people of Paris.





	Here In The Darkness I Feel My Heart Race

**Author's Note:**

> title from Hey Violet's My Consequence
> 
> based on the prompt, "I messed around with an artifact at the museum you work at and now I’m cursed, please help me, no one believes me au"
> 
> thanks to my best friend who beta'd this.

“I swear to God, Alya, I’m cursed,” Marinette moans, dropping her head onto the table she and Alya are sitting at outside the coffee shop.

“Marinette, you work in a museum, that’s gotta be like the safest place possible to work.” Sure, Marinette had always wanted to be a fashion designer. But she got into college and discovered she also liked Fashion History and Museum Studies. Now she curates fashion exhibits at museums all around the world. It was a great gig, until she picked up a broach to put it on the mannequin and, well, she’s pretty sure she’s cursed. 

Marinette lifts up her head just enough to glare at Alya sulkily, leaving her chin still on the table. “Not from curses. There was this old broach, and the medallion in the center glowed green, and since then odd things have been happening.”

Now Alya has the gleam in her eyes that she gets when she’s after a scoop. “Like what?”

“Like… remember how I got tripped on my way through the door and knocked everyone in line down?”

“You’ve always been clumsy.”

“No, but it was like a chain reaction. Someone’s foot was suddenly in my way because he’d been dodging a waiter.”

“Still sounds a little far fetched.”

“You can believe in all the crazy villains running around town, but not in one little curse?” Marinette seethes. 

Marinette gets up, done with this conversation and ready to go home, holding her empty coffee cup to return to the bussing station. A waiter heads out the door and bumps into a businessman walking past on the sidewalk, sending his tray, with coffeecup and all, flying. The hot coffee falls right on Marinette’s head. Marinette drops her coffee cup in surprise, leaving two broken coffee cups at her feet. 

“Par for the course,” Marinette sighs. “Sorry about your coffee cups. I can pay for that,” she adds guiltily. She makes enough money these days that she can actually say things like that and mean it. It’s kinda odd after growing up running a bakery, where money always had to be watched and you were always calculating the food costs.

“It was not your fault, mademoiselle,” the waiter says.

“It wasn’t yours, either,” Marinette says. “These things happen.” 

  
  


Unfortunately, Ladybug is still needed to save the city, whether Marinette is cursed or not. She shows up to the eiffel tower to fight the newest villain, who has released bats all over the city. Marinette has just finished purifying the akuma, when throwing her yo-yo into the sky sets her off-balance and she falls. 

From the top of the eiffel tower. 

Chat Noir jumps down and catches her in his strong arms, landing on his pole. “Gotcha, my lady.”

“Thanks,” Ladybug says.

“Are you okay?” Chat is looking at her with concern and Marinette is so grateful for her partner. “You’re not normally clumsy like this.”

Marinette laughs, then realizes it’s true. As Marinette, she’s always falling over her feet, but as Ladybug, she’s the calm-cool superhero with incredible balance and acrobatic skill. Tikki must help her with that. But not even Tikki can protect her from a curse, it seems. 

“I’m cursed,” Marinette says.

Chat nods, “Then I’ll just have to protect you.” Chat is still holding her, and Marinette can’t stop herself from blushing. Instead, Marinette jumps out of Chat’s arms so she, too, is standing on the bar, on even footing with Chat, though the short length of the pole forces them close.

“How can you? You don’t even know who I am.” Part of Marinette wants Chat to know who she is, these days. She’s probably closer to him than she even is with Alya, what with them both being busy with their jobs. But she can’t tell him like this. There’s a reason they keep their identities a secret.

“Why don’t you go re-transform, and then I’ll watch you until we can figure out how to stop the curse.”

How can Marinette possibly let Chat help her stop the curse without revealing who she is? That said, help would be very useful. She has to think fast. “Well, here’s the thing. I got the curse from this girl Marinette. It’s even stronger on her. I’m sure if you went and helped her get rid of the curse, it’d get rid of mine. I’ll just go home and rest.”

“Marinette Dupain-Chang? The art curator?” Marinette is surprised Chat knows who she is. Sure, she’s made a name for herself, but mostly only within the antiquities and museum community.

“That’s the one,” Marinette says, and realizes how close to Chat she is. She can feel his warm breath against her cheeks, his pink lips smiling in response to what she’s said. If they weren’t forced into this position by necessity, Marinette would think they were about to kiss.

Marinette’s earrings beep. “Looks like you’ve gotta go,” Chat says. “But do me a favor: be careful.”

“I will,” Marinette finds herself honestly promising. Then she uses her yo-yo to swing down to the ground and ducks out of sight.

  
  


Chat shows up at her apartment later that night. Marinette isn’t sure how he got her address, but she’s sure he has his ways. He probably just looked it up in the phonebook, or used facebook or google or something. 

Chat stands in the center of her apartment and looks around, taking it all in. Marinette almost feels guilty- she still has posters of Adrien all over her walls, and that’s not really something she wants her partner to see. Not that Chat knows he’s her partner, but still. It’s awkward how hung up she is on Adrien, still, when she’s only seen him intermittently over the past few years. He’s still modelling, and Marinette still can’t string together two words around him. The more things change, the more things stay the same, it seems.

After a moment, Chat seems to right himself, and says, “I hear you’re cursed. Allow me to help fix this  _ cat _ -astrophe.”

“Now isn’t the time for puns,” Marinette says, getting a sense of deja-vu because that’s what she always says to Chat as Ladybug. “We have a curse to deal with.”

  
  


Marinette lets Chat lead her to the Louvre, then she takes over and leads the way through the Staff-Only back hallways to her office. She pulls out the broach, “This is what cursed me.”

“You’ve gotta be yankin’ my  _ chain _ ,” Chat says. He gets this adorable pleased look on his face as he says it, and Marinette can’t hate the pun as much as usual. That’s been happening to her a lot recently with Chat, actually.

Still, Marinette groans, “That was bad. There are no chains on broaches.” She rights herself. “There has to be some kind of magic making this happen, but I can’t figure out what,” Marinette says. She roots around in her desk and pulls out a file with a few papers in it. “This is everything I know about the artifact.” It’s not very much. She knows a bit about where it was made, but most of that is guess-work. She knows a good deal about how it was made, the general processes common to the era. She also knows a bit about the original owner who commissioned the piece, though mostly that’s just a name and a bit about her social standing.

Chat flips through the file. “What’s this?”

“What?” Marinette asks, leaning in to peer at the notes she’s read too many times. 

“This here about her social contacts. Mssr. H. Moth. You don’t think…”

Marinette gasps. She’d breezed through the list of social contacts thinking of it as trivial fluff. But if the original owner knew Hawkmoth, it’d be totally reasonable for her to have some cursed object that still contained an akuma that had never been de-evilized, left behind when the owner had died. 

Still, Marinette’s not willing to risk destroying a priceless artifact based on a hunch. “I think we’ll need a little more proof than…”

She trails off as Chat pulls her close. “Marinette,” he says, but doesn’t follow it with anything, instead looking deeply into her eyes and then flicking his gaze down to her lips. Marinette is almost sure Chat is going to kiss her, and she finds herself actually willing to let him. Chat, her long-time partner and one of her best friends, even if he does tell bad jokes.

Even if he isn’t Adrien. 

She lets her eyes flutter shut, and suddenly there’s a skittering crash. 

Marinette’s eyes flash back open just as Chat is stamping the heel of his boots down on the broach he’s knocked onto the floor. Marinette pours paper clips out of one of the decorative jars she has on her desk, and uses it to catch the akuma, returning it to her desk face-down to trap the akuma. 

“I’ll have to get Ladybug,” Chat says, “She’s the one who can de-evilize the akumas.” He rushes out of the room, leaving Marinette reeling, still thinking about their almost-kiss.

She’d almost let Chat kiss her. What was she thinking? She’s still in love with Adrien.

But maybe, a little voice in the back of her head says, it’s time to let Adrien go.

She has to pull herself out of her thoughts, though, because Chat is looking for Ladybug. Looking for  _ her _ . 

Marinette transforms there, in the office, and finds her yo-yo blinking with a video call from Chat. He’s standing outside, by the glass pyramid. “Ladybug, where are you? I need you at the Louvre.”

“I’m already here. Marinette said to meet you here, and I was already in the neighborhood,” Marinette says, the lie only coming out a little awkwardly. “I’m in Marinette’s office. I’ll take care of the Akuma. You can go home.” She can’t face him right now, not after he almost kissed her and then left her. He didn’t even say anything about it. Did he even feel what she felt, or was it only a distraction so he could break the broach?

Marinette puts her thoughts aside and de-evilizes the akuma and throws her yo-yo into the sky. 

At least she’ll finally be rid of this curse.

  
  


Marinette wakes up the next morning to a text from Alya. 

**Adrien asked for your address last night. Did he show up at your place? ;)**

Maybe it’s not quite time for Marinette to get over Adrien after all. At least she won’t have to choose between him and Chat. 

(But she will have to deal with how he left after almost kissing her.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and Happy Halloween! Feel free to comment, if you'd like!


End file.
